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VERTAMAE GROSVENOR v/o: The Following Program Contains Racist and Anti-Gay Language. Parental Guidance Is Suggested.

HARVEY CARON: "I got seventeen years in prison. I'm probably going to be here for the rest of my life."

RONALD BENNETT: "The only thing that was on my mind was getting the next drug, that's it."

STEVE RAINES: "There's guys saying it's OK to bash faggots, it's all right."

MOSES LEVY: "To desecrate any part of the church-- to us, this is the work of the Devil."

TAMI KIMBLE: "They called me a nigger to my face."

NOAH THOMAS: "Sick…"

REV. JONATHAN MOUZON: "People are reaching out for somebody that seems to care about them, somebody that loves them."

DAWN PARSONS: "You do not have a right to a good neighborhood. It's your responsibility."

LILLIAN ANDERSON: "Get active. If you want your neighborhood back-- and you can get it back-- remember, there's more of us than them."

Title: Seeking Solutions with Hedrick Smith

GROSVENOR v/o: Principle funding for Seeking Solutions provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Investing in ideas. Returning results.

Major funding provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The Surdna Foundation

Additional funding provided by the following: The Charles H. Revson Foundation, The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

STAND UP:

HEDRICK SMITH: HELLO, I’M HEDRICK SMITH.

EVERYONE FEARS VIOLENCE BUT HATE CRIME IS ESPECIALLY THREATENING TO MANY AMERICANS BECAUSE OF THE OBVIOUS DIFFERENCES AMONG US. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY’S MOST TERRIBLE IMAGE OF HATE CRIME IS THE HOLOCAUST, THE MONUMENTAL MURDER OF MILLIONS OF JEWS BY NAZI GERMANY.

BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO VISIT THIS HOLOCAUST MUSEUM TO ENCOUNTER THE EXTREMES OF HATE. IN TOWNS AND CITIES ALL ACROSS AMERICA, HATE CRIME IS A BRUTAL REALITY. EACH YEAR MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES ARE ATTACKED, RAPED, EVEN KILLED JUST BECAUSE OF WHO THEY ARE.

BUT AS YOU’LL SEE IN THE NEXT HOUR, SOME COMMUNITIES HAVE MUSTERED THE COURAGE TO STAND UP AGAINST HATE, WHETHER IN A COURT OF LAW, A CHURCH SERVICE, OR A HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM.

WE’LL TAKE YOU FROM SOUTH CAROLINA TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SEEKING SOLUTIONS THAT ORDINARY AMERICANS, PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU, HAVE USED TO DISARM BIGOTRY AND TO STOP THE VIOLENCE. WE BEGIN IN THE DEEP SOUTH.

REV. JONATHAN MOUZON: It was a terrible thing. We just saw it just all go up in flames. You feel helpless cause it’s not a thing you can do, not one thing.

HORACE KING: If we had this garbage in South Carolina, we would burn the bastards out or run them out of town…

MOSES LEVY: The black church is one of the few things that we owned in our community so when we speak of our church, we are speaking of something that we deem as number one… To desecrate any part of the church, to us this is the work of the Devil.

MOUZON: …We knew we were coming back. There was a point where we didn’t know how but we knew we were coming back.

SENATOR JOHN LAND: All of us were, were horrified by the burnings. I mean it’s just so unnecessary, such a waste…

NARR: JOHN LAND IS THE LOCAL STATE SENATOR.

JOHN LAND, STATE SENATOR: Like I say, it was out of character for this community because we get along very, very well here.

GINA WILSON, MANNING NURSE: I was shocked and very saddened that people in Manning would come to that.

DANIEL NEVILLE, MANNING STORE OWNER: And a lot of people didn’t believe that that was going on but it was. It was right under our noses and we should have been aware of it. We should have taken steps. There should not be an organization that hates people.

JESSE YOUNG, LOCAL STORE OWNER: …That wasn’t Timmy, it wasn’t Timmy and I just couldn’t believe it.

WANDA MITCHUM: Arthur was not their friend, Herbert Rowell was not their friend.

WANDA MITCHUM, TIM WELCH’S MOTHER: …All they had succeeded in doing was putting two poor, stupid country boys in penitentiary.

LESTER HALEY: I was the EC. The Exalted Cyclops or whatever they call it.

LESTER HALEY, LOCAL KLAN LEADER: I think that the blacks do get jobs that a lot of poor white people could get. I think that everybody ought to have equal opportunity in this country. We don’t have that any more. See the black people, they got people to help them but we don’t. Poor white people don’t have anybody to help them. I mean they just throw poor, poor white people in jail and call them racists. . .

REV. JONATHAN MOUZON, MACEDONIA BAPTIST CHURCH: . . .It’s people living from, from day to day, from week to week. Work hard, 40, 50 hours a week and can barely keep food on the table. People are reaching out for, for somebody that seems to care about them, somebody that loves them. And so Horace King, he comes in and he manipulates feelings like that.

MITCHUM: The Klan takes poor people and they manipulate them to do their dirty work.

MOUZON: . . .I would have gone all the way if, even if, it cost me my life to stand up and say you can’t do this.

BUT FIRST, HE HAD TO PERSUADE HIS CONGREGATION.

YOUNG: I would say half the congregation was very hesitant about … filing the lawsuit. But after.

SMITH: Why?

YOUNG: Cause I think they were still afraid.

MOUZON: You don’t buck the system. The Klan is a white organization and you just, you don’t go against things like that. You leave it alone and you walk away. You take your lumps and you go on.

YOUNG: …That’s the fear that we have, that was in this community. It was that strong. That’s how much people just kind of feared the, even just the name Klan. When you see the name KKK, Ku Klux Klan, it kind of - to older people - it brought a chill to them.

THE MT. ZION AME CHURCH, HOWEVER, BACKED AWAY FROM THE LAWSUIT.

MOUZON: Their spirits were almost broken. …Fear just wouldn’t let them make the leap.

LAND: Let justice flow from Clarendon County. . .

LAND: We wanted to send a message, we wanted to tell the rest of the country and the world that, that the, hate crimes, church burnings was not representative of us, and we wanted to deter anyone else that ever wanted to come down here to provoke trouble.

LAND: They saw Horace King at his very best…

KING: They ain’t no bubble-headed niggers living in it. . .

LAND: …hatred just spewing from his mouth.

TIM WELCH: They use the Bible to say that blacks aren’t human, Jews aren’t human…whites, whites, that’s it. So you can’t, if you allow blacks, you can’t be Christian. The only Christian thing to do was to get rid of them.

LAND: Well, we were stunned. We thought they’d read the verdict wrong . . .

SMITH: Why such a high figure?

MOSES LEVY, JURY FOREMAN: The high figure was to send a message and it was to send a message to Klansmen not just here in South Carolina but universally that these are things that should not happen in Clarendon County or any place else in this country…

PRESS: Mr. King, what does this mean to your organization?

KING: No comment

SMITH: Did the Macedonia church ever get any money to your knowledge from the lawsuit?

LAND: No they didn’t get any money and I doubt that they ever will.

MOUZON: …Our objective was to make that statement. Listen, we’re here, we’re not going anywhere and when you come, we’re going to stand up against you and we did that.

SMITH: Did it have an effect on the Klan and its activity?

HALEY: Sure, yeah. When them guys burned the church everybody that was in the Klan run and hide and you know and they, they just abolished the whole thing you know. It just wasn’t no more Klan.

SMITH: Do you think in the late 60s you’d have seen the conviction of members of the Ku Klux Klan for a black church burning or a verdict like this?

LAND: I doubt it. …I would venture to say that you would not have been able to find a white attorney in this community to represent the plaintiffs against the Ku Klux Klan.

MOUZON: Not 30 years ago.

SMITH: What would have happened if there’d been a burned church 30 years ago?

YOUNG: Probably nothing. I would probably have said nothing would happen. That’s just the way it was. I’m glad it’s not like that now.

LEVY: We are at a point where we are respected, there are some things that will happen and we will receive equal justice under the law.

SMITH: That’s a big deal.

LEVY: Big deal.

JOHN LAND, STATE SENATOR: The State of South Carolina has grown up since the 60s from a, from a race standpoint and certainly this community has.

NARR: PROGRESS HERE REACHES BEYOND THE COURTS. DOWN THE ROAD FROM MACEDONIA BAPTIST CHURCH, HERE AT YOUNG’S COUNTRY MART, ANOTHER BREAKTHROUGH.

YOUNG: Okay, take care, John.

JESSE YOUNG, LOCAL STORE OWNER: That was pretty unusual because they were like the people that were ahead of me on the list were white. And he’s white and you don’t normally hear about that. In a small county like this or a small town like this.

SMITH: Had Greeleyville ever had a black mayor before?

ISAAC HOLMES, GREELEYVILLE MAYOR: Never in its history. And when I was running everybody was laughing, saying he could never make it, but I did.

HOLMES: As a young black boy coming up in the town of Greeleyville, the office I’m holding today was off limit to me. I never set foot in the, in the town hall, that was just. I’m quite certain it wasn’t a law, but then certain things just did not happen.

HOLMES: Right here, on this side of the street here, these people are not allowed to vote. They’re not in the, in the limit as far as voting is concerned and these people on this side of the street.

SMITH: Over here?

HOLMES: Yeah, they are, they are, they are allowed. They are allowed to vote.

SMITH: And who’s living over here?

HOLMES: One of our white neighbors.

SMITH: And who’s living over here?

HOLMES: One of our black neighbors.

SMITH: So say you’re saying this black side of the street is not able to vote and this white side of the street is able to vote?

HOLMES: That’s what I am saying.

SMITH: But there was some fellowship back and forth between the churches after the fire?

YOUNG: Oh yeah, yeah I mean you know, Hey, if I want to hide something, best thing to do is to come up and say ‘Hey, let’s fellowship together and let the world see that we’re getting along.’ So this thing can be hush hush.

WANDA MITCHUM, TIM WELCH’S MOTHER: To try to let him know that Timothy wasn’t raised like that and that, that we’re all not all people are not like that. And to see if I could do anything to help.

SMITH: Do you get any grief from some of your white friends about coming to this church?

MITCHUM: Sure.

SMITH: What do they say?

MITCHUM: Well to be pointed, forgive me Jonathan. I was told this week I need to stay away from them niggers…

MITCHUM: …I get phone calls on a regular basis. People tell me they’re going to chop my body up. They’re going to um, hack me up and feed me to alligators in a raw pit. They’re going to kill my grandchildren.

MITCHUM: What I would really like to do is have everybody of every race and creed get together and just commune and find out that everybody ain’t bad, that there’s more good ones than there is bad ones.

SMITH: You’ve invited…?

MOUZON: …The entire neighborhood, from all across town, both churches: black churches, white churches. So we’re hoping that this is a start.

MOUZON: One man from a white church said that he was going to donate 50 pounds of catfish to make a catfish stew.

MOUZON: …I’m really disappointed. We were looking for between 60-100 people. I thought it probably would be half white and half black. We had probably 25-30 people here. And majority of them were our own members. I think total whites was something like four people.

MOUZON: We’ve been talking about coming together for years, and it never really materializes.

NARR: REVEREND MOUZON, NOT TO BE DETERRED, PLANS ANOTHER PICNIC. BUT IT IS A DAUNTING CHALLENGE. MANY PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY WHITES WITH INFLUENCE, WANT TO PUT THE CHURCH BURNINGS BEHIND THEM AND GET BACK TO LIFE AS IT WAS.

LAND: I believe that, that our racial relationships were good prior to that and good after that. And so there was not much that we needed to heal…

MITCHUM: Going back to the way it was, it wasn’t so good.

YOUNG: We want to have as much right as whites and whites want to have as much rights as blacks so we should be on an equal level. But we’re, we’re not. We’re kind of like, like that (hand gestures) and it’s going to take a lot of work to get it even, a lot of work.

SMITH: What’s the problem?

MOUZON: I guess it would, you’d have to go back. There’s a lot of feelings that has been built in, that came through the years.

MITCHUM: Years of ‘Yassuh,’ years of ‘Yassuh, Massa.’

MOUZON: …Segregated restaurants, schools and things like that. You know we, we have to get past that.

GINA WILSON, MANNING NURSE: There’s a lot of healing to take place… I just feel like there’s still issues. ...There’s still things that happen. There are still racial issues.

DANIEL NEVILLE, NAMMING STORE OWNER: If maybe somebody had taken the time to talk to bring it out sooner, we would have saved the church.

MOUZON: It needs to be more people that speaks out. Silence is a, an enabler to hate groups. And we keep our mouths shut, it just gives them more power.

SMITH: For a public dialogue on effective ways for combating hate crime, we’ve gathered a cross section of people in Columbia, South Carolina. Senator Land, I’d like to start with you and ask you if after seeing that video whether or not you feel as though there’s been enough racial healing in Clarendon County.

JOHN LAND, STATE SENATOR: Well I think probably so but not to say that we can’t do more. But as a I tried to say when you interviewed me before, I thought that in Clarendon County we had a wonderful relationship between black and white. That’s how I felt. Obviously others didn’t feel that way and obviously from the comments made there is a lot yet to be done and we need to get back to work to bring people together.

SMITH: Thank you. There are a couple of people who would be here tonight and whom we invited, Reverend Mouzon of the Macedonia Baptist Church and Jesse Young who has that store. They’re not here. In the last 24 hours several black people from the Manning area have told us they can’t come and we’ve kept empty seats for them. Tom Jennings you were down there, you were down there this morning. You saw Reverend Mouzon. You saw Jesse Young. Why aren’t they here?

TOM JENNINGS: Well Reverend Mouzon has been receiving several threats against his, against his life, physical threats of violence. Jesse Young has recently been, his store was recently broken into. A door was knocked down. Nothing was taken. There were thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes there to be taken. But nothing was taken.

SMITH: So these are brave guys. They’ve both stood up to a lot. I mean why, why threats now make a difference?

TOM JENNINGS, STAFF FIELD PRODUCER: They’ve been put into a place of, of fear. Jonathan Mouzon in particular is, is actually more concerned about his parishioners and his family. He, he says that he’ll go up against anybody who, who comes at him but he’s, he’s deathly afraid of the collateral damage so to speak.

SMITH: You mean the members of his church?

JENNINGS: The members of his church. He doesn’t want to be responsible for the harm that might come to anybody but himself.

SMITH: Wanda Mitchum, you’re from that part of the state. Are their fears reasonable? Are these people making something up do you think?

WANDA MITCHUM, MOTHER OF CHURCH ARSONIST: No, I was threatened at 6:30 this morning. I got a phone call that said if I came here tonight I would not live to be back in my home after the show was over.

SMITH: I talked to Lester Haley down there. He said the Klan essentially had gone out of the business. Has it?

MITCHUM: No.

SMITH: No?

MITCHUM: No, they’re still meeting, behind closed doors but they’re still there.

SMITH: Thanks very much. Mr. Washington, is this a closed book or is there more that needs to be done?

JESSE WASHINGTON, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST: I don’t think it’s a closed book. I don’t think the book can be closed in South Carolina until we have reached the beloved community, a community where we respect each other and get along with each other in a harmonious atmosphere. I think the threats are real. I think the threats have the potential to be carried out. So we must all be careful and we must be concerned for them, who are under the threats at this time.

SMITH: Ok, thanks. Lake High I wonder from your standpoint what’s your take on the whole episode?

LAKE HIGH, THE LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH: What I noticed about the 18 minute intro that you had was the slant. For instance, there you stood out in the middle or on the side of a street with a fellow, black fellow, who was mayor of that town. Which presumably he therefore got a majority of the votes. And you said on this side of the street the whites can vote and on the other side the blacks cannot. Could that have something to do with the zoning? Like may be that’s the boundary there?

SMITH: Actually the mayor told us they were both inside the city limits. The city limit sign is about a quarter of a mile down the block. But I guess you’re raising a larger question and that is the question about whether or not the media reports on race relations fairly.

HIGH: My take on that is it probably does not. For instance um I’ll bet, Hedrick if you asked the people in this, this audience if there is more black on white crime or white on black crime, I’ll bet that you would get that there is more white on black crime, hate crime.

HIGH: Actually that’s not so.

HIGH: The FBI in their most recent, which is in the 1997 book lists 9800 hate crimes of which 5600 are racial. The rate of black on white crime over white on black is actually two and a quarter times greater.

SMITH: So there’s more black crime, black against white crime...

HIGH: The rate is higher. Black on white than white on black. I’ll bet most people don’t know that. I’ll bet ...

SMITH: And so you’re saying the major media is saying that, that is reporting that more whites are attacking blacks than vice versa.

HIGH: Yes.

SMITH: Thank you. Kathy Hall Jamieson you live in Philadelphia. You are at the University of Pennsylvania and you study media reporting on many things including hate crimes.

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: What we’ve found was that the Philadelphia media market dramatically over represented black against white crime proportionate to the amount that there actually was in the media market. As a fact most of the time crime of a violent sort is within the same race. Whites against whites, blacks against blacks. There isn’t much crossover overall in violent crime categories. But when it occurs it’s far more interesting to the media when the black is the perpetrator and the white is the victim. And so we see the media over representing a certain type of perspective. Particularly on African Americans living in cities.

SMITH: Thanks very much. Professor Levin you are a specialist in this particular area. I wonder if you’d give us a picture of what the overall crime problem is in terms of hate crime.

PROFESSOR LEVIN: sure.

SMITH: Who does it and why?

JACK LEVIN, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY: yeah well hate crimes are any crimes that are committed against an individual because he’s different or she’s different with respect to race or religion, ethnic origin or gender or disability status or sexual orientation. And that means that hate crimes relate not just to blacks but also to whites. Not only to gays but also to straights. It means that everyone is protected by hate crime legislation.

SMITH: Ok, is there any way of, of saying by and large who commits those crimes? Are they young people, are they older people, are they all over the country, are they concentrated in one region?

LEVIN: No they, they’re all over the country and the truth is that most hate crimes, including the church burnings are committed by young people who have no allegiance to any hate group at all. They’re, they’re teen agers, they’re young adults who go out on a Saturday night and, and looking for someone to bash or to assault and they do it for the bragging rights, for the thrill.

SMITH: And why? I mean are these kids who’ve got a stake in society, are they marginalized?

LEVIN: No. These are marginalized and alienated young people. They’re not getting along at home with their parents. They’re not making it at school with their friends. And if they have jobs, they have dead-end jobs at best. They have no hope for the future. And in a hate crime, by burning a church or burning a cross or assaulting a vulnerable victim, they, they actually gain a sense of their own importance, they feel special. And if we really want to reduce hate crimes in this country what we have to do is give our children healthy alternatives to hate and violence.

SMITH: Great. Thanks very much. Reverend Long, you work in the field of reconciliation, and what are the keys to dealing with hate crime effectively and reducing it?

REV. SHANNON LONG, LAURENS BAPTIST CHURCH: One thing we did in Lawrence where I’m from, we had a meeting of all denominations to come together in a spiritual atmosphere, church meeting together and it was probably 50% white, 50% black. Because we’re not going to know each other, we get into each other’s homes, til we sit down over a meal, til we talk together and for those who are spiritual, pray together and we have done those things.

SMITH: Great, thanks very much. I wonder if anybody else is involved in interracial activity. Yes, sir.

TOM TURNIPSEED, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: It’s just very bothersome to me that men like Jesse Young and Jonathan Mouzon are afraid to come to Columbia tonight. I mean we can do better than this and we’ve got to. We’ve just got to, to really get, get down to what racial reconciliation is and face up to some of the intergenerational problems of hate and fear that are just handed down. And I don’t know what to do, Hedrick, other than to bring it out in the open and talk about it.

SMITH: I wondered Dr. Sullivan as a 25 year minister of the First Baptist church in Manning, if you have some comments. I’ll be honest with you among the whites in Manning we had as much trouble getting people to come to this town meeting as Reverend Mouzon did in getting them to come to his church picnic. And I’m wondering whether or not is that a problem.

REV. PAUL SULLIVAN, RETIRED MANNING PASTOR: Well I think the burning of the church at Macedonia created an atmosphere for us to have better race relationships than we’d had before. I went down myself and I preached in the church and half the congregation that day was made up of the members of the First Baptist church. There’d have been further developments but I was in the process of retiring at the time and we just got a new pastor in. And there will be some more work done in that area.

SMITH: Thank you. Ammie Murray you have been an activist trying to help the reconciliation after a church burning in your area. Is it easy and what happened?

AMMIE MURRAY: The church, St. John the Baptist church was vandalized horribly and as some have said here earlier, the people were scared to death to report it. They wouldn’t report it.

SMITH: And what did you do when you found out about it?

MURRAY: I went down there to see and I couldn’t believe it. It was awful.

SMITH: And what happened to you when you started to reach out?

MURRAY: Oh well, I was threatened hundreds of times, my life and my dogs were killed, they were murdered 2 weeks apart, they were nine years old. My grandchildren were threatened. They chased me down the road, rammed my car. For ten years they had over 200 arrests down there for vandalism. And next month, we’ll be having the dedication of St. John the Baptist church, 7 times larger than it was. The first person baptized in the new church was a white female. And now, it was founded by slaves, but the volunteers coming together from all races, from all different politics, different backgrounds. Put aside those differences and they worked together for the greater good and we all decided that silence is acceptance and we’re not going to be silent any more and I think that’s the big problem in this country. Is that we keep our mouths shut and look and say we can’t do anything. Well by God we can.

(applause)

SMITH: Does anybody want to add anything on that point? Yes sir.

JAMIE RENDA, COLUMBIA RESIDENT: This past February they had a Martin Luther King day Disney movie on and we were hesitant on whether or not to let our daughters watch it and about half way through my seven-year old turns to me with tears coming down her eyes, she said mom were all white people that mean? I said no, Clarissa they weren’t. She says well what were our ancestors like. I said well I said we probably had some ancestors that could have been. I said but what matters more is what we’re like, and it was at that time I decided that it’s time to take down the symbolisms that divide us. And I don’t consider the confederate flag that flies over our state capital, it really has anything to do with the civil war. It was put up there so the African American community would remember their place and that’s my feeling. Let’s get it down before we go into this 21^st century.

(applause)

SMITH: Any other viewpoint on that? Yes ma’am.

ETHEL CRAWFORD, COLUMBIA RESIDENT: We’re not going to have solutions to this problem until we come to the real issue which is the one-ness of humanity. We have so many similarities that we haven’t even touched but we’re so concentrated on our differences that the gap is getting larger.

SMITH: Thanks for your comment. Now let’s go to another part of America for another response to hate crime and another form of hate crime. A reminder that this ugly form of violence is not the exclusive problem of any one region of our country.

WHITE STUDENT: ‘Your buddies are talking to you about, ‘Damn Mexicans getting all them jobs.’

WHITE STUDENT: ‘But like guys, they see a homosexual and they’re like, ‘Aw, look at that fag over there.’

BLACK STUDENT: They’re like go back to Africa you nigger. . .

FEMALE STUDENT: I used to like hate lesbians and like faggots and stuff like that. . .

JOE MOROS, TOLERANCE CLASS TEACHER: It's not English. It's not Psychology. It's not Social Science. It's just what it is, a class in prejudice. It's a class in discrimination, hatred, and violence.

MOROS: The first day, Steve was there. . .

STEVE RAINES: I’m going to start off with how I became prejudiced. I started hanging out with certain people who weren’t necessarily Nazis or skinheads but we did have a certain white pride, white power to us. And the whole reason I took this class was to tell people I was prejudiced and why, and not because I wanted help or I thought I needed help. Well, because this is the way I am. You can’t change me.

STEVE RAINES, FORMER STUDENT: The whites were kind of not getting along with the blacks. The Mexicans weren't getting along with the blacks. There was all these different little clicks and races that weren't getting along. We didn't really want to get along.

NOAH THOMAS, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: . . . I remember seeing flyers on the ground with Nazli, Nazi tableture (ph.) on 'em.

TAMI KIMBLE, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: There was a lot of KKK and skinhead guys here and the girls were involved in it too. And they called me a nigger to my face. . .

NOAH: Sick.

RAINES: I had guys come up to me that I didn't know saying ‘right on. Tell your brother I said that's great, bashing that faggot. It's okay to bash faggots. It's all right. It's a guy thing. Or it's a hate thing. It's okay.’ Tell him I said, right on, and that's cool and stuff. And you know at the sime time I’m sitting there going, you know, my brother is in prison right now.

MOROS: ‘Lets talk about some of the stereotypes then about your group. . ."

STUDENT: "That’s another thing, all black people come from the ghettos, there’s no other race in the ghetto. . ."

SMITH: What did you hope to accomplish?

MOROS: To stop the hatred, basically, and the violence. Both of those things I think were predominant in my mind because I had seen one student who ended up in prison and another one whose face to this day I can still see four chairs back over there -- sweetest, nicest kid — dead.

SMITH: How did you learn the attitudes you brought to high school?

RAINES: From my father. He would say, oh those damn spics and niggers and this and that, and gays and fags and he didn't realize that I would, like a child would, suck it in like a sponge, like everything he said, everything he did.

RAINES: "We started getting calls at my house from homosexual people saying they wanted to burn down our house, kill us. . ."

MOROS: Hate crimes - gays and lesbos. God made men and women to be partners, not to be with each other. Every homosexual be judged by God. . .

RAINES: . . . and I hope they don't mind fire because they will be burning eternally. Not only do they destroy their families and themselves but heterosexuals as well.

SMITH: So that was it. That was the Steve of that era.

RAINES: Yeah. Not very tolerant.

MOROS: . . . I really thought that that was kind of sad that he would write that in a journal in a tolerance class.

STUDENT: "and I picked up this rock. . ."

JOHN NASTEFF, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: Like yesterday I found out like my prom date couldn't go with me to prom because I was black and it fueled up so much.

SMITH: And she is?

JOHN: She's white, and her parents just said it was wrong. She is hurt because first of all she didn't know her parents were so bigoted but um I had no idea what to feel, I was in just this mood like, is it my fault or, I mean this is her senior prom, and if I couldn't go to my senior prom I would be just devastated. . .

NOAH: When we're kids we get to play and see how everybody works together and everybody's looking after us it seems like - teachers, parents, but then like all of a sudden we're wearing bigger shoes and bigger pants and driving cars and paying taxes. It's just ridiculous. How could anybody morph into such a different life without taking the steps to function with people that are different than you…

LACIE GRIMSHAW, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: I'm Pep Commissioner so I'm considered to be this really happy, outgoing type person and inside I had all these problems, so it was important for me to talk about that.

KATIE NUNEZ, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: I remember when she did that, and there were so many kids that stood up and they're like, oh I have depression or I think I might.

THE POINT IS OPENNESS TO OTHER PEOPLE’S DIFFERENCES.

BRIANNA MORROW, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: . . . At break I don't go out to my friends and tell them how I feel about racism and what I feel about hate. I mean it's just not something that you discuss. You discuss the movie that you saw last night on TV.

And in this class you talk about things that you would never ever, that you just, the conversation and the opportunity would not arise.

SMITH: But do you need to talk about it?

BRIANNA: Yeah, oh definitely...

SMITH: Why?

BRIANNA: Definitely. You need to talk about things because this class shows you views that other people have that you've, you've never thought about in and you're oh. And you hear people talk and you go, oh yeah, you know . . .

MOROS: ‘Might take longer for some people . . .’

MOROS: And so he walks up and I say how are you Steve, and he says ‘well I’m fine and I just wanted to come back and tell you something.’

RAINES: I went back to school and I said, ‘this is my girlfriend. She's Indian, and I'm not prejudiced anymore.’ His eyes got the size of a basketball, oh my God, you know.

MOROS: …I had tears in my eyes, because it really was my success story. . .

RAINES: The class did change me. It just took me a while to really accept it in myself and in my heart.

RAINES: . . . It's weird. I see some of my friends who I used to know in high school and they used to know me when I was white pride and stuff, and they see me walking around with a black girl, they're like...’yo, you're Steve, right?’ ‘Yea man, how you doing, brother?’ ‘good man, how you doing?" They trip out. ‘Cause, they’re like haven't seen me in four years and totally changed.

RAINES: . . . I like hip hop. I like rap. I like R&B. I like the black culture. They're not tolerant of that. They think it’s nigger music or it’s crap. If you like it then you must be like them, so you're a wigger. You're a white nigger.

JENNIFER VARNAU, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: I don't know if anybody else has seen it, like there are mind sets kind of changing and it's really good to see that.

TAMI: It has mellowed completely. I haven't heard of another incident dealing with racism since my sophomore year.

KATIE: I think it definitely should be required for everyone, but I think as a start. I think that like people that have been kicked out for racial issues I think they need to sit through this course and see if it changes them.

MOROS: Our school is a much more peaceful place, it really is. It's a nicer place to be.

SMITH: Can you learn tolerance?

RAINES: Definitely. If you can teach a kid to slow down and realize what he's doing before it happens, you're gonna save a lot of people.

SMITH: Dr. Peterson, you’ve just seen this course with the gentleman sitting right next to you Steve Raines in California. I’m just wondering in Manning High School, how do you think such a course would work?

HUGH PETERSON, RETIRED MANNING PRINCIPAL: It’s something that needs to be in all schools. In our school we do have a multi cultural curriculum and I think we have to teach respect for diversity. Get to know each other.

SMITH: Anybody else’s response? Yes sir.

RABBI MARC KLINE, BETH ISRAEL CONGREGATION: We have to open doors to educate our children whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s in the church or synagogue I think but mostly in the homes. And somehow telling a child in a classroom what’s right or wrong isn’t going to translate into a solution unless we can also teach the parents so when the child comes back home they don’t get the cross message.

SMITH: Thank you. Is anybody here uncomfortable with having this kind of a course?

GLENN STANTON, PALMETTO FAMILY COUNCIL: Well as a parent I’m uncomfortable with the idea from a number of perspectives. I don’t want my children just to tolerate other people. I want them to embrace other people for the qualities that they have. And I think that those things that, that embracing comes from a deeper sort of life perspective which I would call religion and particularly Christian faith which personally works for me and, and unfortunately I don’t think that those things and they can’t be taught in a public classroom.

SMITH: Now does that go all across the board. Does that go to gender, it go to other religions, does that go to gays, does that go to all kinds of folks.

GLENN STANTON: That’s another problem that I have and unfortunately when we say that well I think that to embrace and celebrate people because of skin color means that we also have to embrace and celebrate people because of their sexual decisions that they make. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Now likewise I don’t think to say that because sexual distinction is not the same skin color that we can go and, and bash in the heads of black people. I mean or, or of homosexual and lesbian people. We do need to appreciate, celebrate, respect them as human beings but I do feel uncomfortable with that equating the two.

HARRIET HANCOCK, GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST: As the mother of a gay son, I would give almost anything to see a tolerance class be on the curriculum of every junior high and high school in the state of South Carolina, preferably the whole United States. I think that it is a wonderful idea. I think that the dialogue that was opened up between the people in that class where they could understand where each other were coming from and their feelings was wonderful.

SMITH: Any other teachers, any other responses? Yes.

B.J. ELLIS, COLUMBIA RESIDENT: Southerners, we really pride ourselves on our good manners and our courtesy but we a lot of us unintentionally are every day racists which means we wouldn’t think twice about maybe saying something racist and insensitive to a person of color and that’s where I think we could all do from a little tolerance training here.

SMITH: Anybody else? Yes, ma’am.

MARIE LAND, MANNING RESIDENT: I’ve been involved with a race relations group in Manning for 7 years and we had a very interesting year this year. We actually came together and really talked feelings and really developed some trust. I think trust is a key word. It’s a very important thing. Until you have that trust you really can’t share those feelings. By having a tolerance class you’re not telling people that you have to accept everything you hear but you’re giving people an opportunity to hear two sides of it, to, to hear what people feel like and to share your feelings and overcome maybe some fears you have that really shouldn’t be.

SMITH: Anybody else, yeah good. I’d love to get a student. Yeah.

JENNIFER ELSWICK, HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR: We have two clubs-- it’s called harmony committee and interact. And students choose to go to these things and then they branch out and go to all different cultures and we have a lot of different diversity at our school. We have Asian, we have Indian, we have many Hispanics and then of course the black and the white, and I think that when they get together people see how diversity is so, so like entertaining. We have a international day at our school and it and people go and they see the, the different dancing and the different foods and the different cultures and they think it’s wonderful.

SMITH: Great, thanks. You’re a principal. Can anybody teach a course like this? Could you turn this kind of a course over to any teacher?

MARTY MARTIN, HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: No. My experience has been some courses are charismatic. You have to have the right people at the right time. If that teacher leaves, chances are high that the course will go pff. Like that. One course isn’t going to do it. It will help. You have to have the modeling throughout. If I had my power one of the questions I would ask and determine every teacher I hired would be, ‘Are you prejudiced?’ and the answer, when it was obviously, ‘No, I’m not,’ then I would begin to teach them and have the processes in place to help them recognize their unrecognized hypocrisy because everybody’s prejudiced.

SMITH: I wonder if there are any other teachers? Yeah, back there please.

PEGGY PARKER, FMR. PRIMARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: I have been a principal in, in several primary schools. And if you, any teacher, anyone or any parent can look out of a window and watch 4-year olds and 5-year olds, 6- and 7- year olds playing, and there’s an absolute natural love out there. And then in about the 3^rd or 4^th grade or 5^th or 6^th that all stops. And so I know that getting children together and allowing them to talk will work. In my county we have on a Saturday we have a youth racial conference and the kids said we don’t want to call it that. So they named it ‘where’s the love?’ It was fantastic just to watch them. They want to talk, they want to listen. The way to start easing that tension is to understand and I’ve heard that tonight. But is to talk and to talk and to listen and to listen.

STEVE RAINES, SAN CLEMENTE HIGH GRADUATE: I think that would help a lot. It’s just one of those things where I believe that you know hatred and I, ignorance go hand in hand and I think education is the key.

SMITH: Joe, I want to ask you if I can-- what kind of impact on the environment did the local media have in the wake of those violent incidents in your area in your school?

JOE MOROS, TOLERANCE CLASS TEACHER: Well, they stereotyped my school much the way I think the people in South Carolina would get stereotyped especially the whites for the black churches being burned. Blame, blame, blame, blame. The media seemed to think that Steve’s brother went out on a field trip and we gave him a yellow bus to go up and beat up gay people in Laguna Beach. And that’s not the case. They went out on a weekend, isolated from everybody else and it was an incident but we had a deluge of media on our campus and it really irritated me because over 2000 students did not go out that weekend and beat somebody up. One student did.

SMITH: Let me ask you, Professor Jamieson, about the media. When there is something which is pretty well identifiable as a hate crime, such as the recent shootings in Chicago and Bloomington, Indiana, what is your experience? Is the media helpful or does the media aggravate the situation and make it harder to get to some kind of reconciliation or resolution?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: They are very few times in the United Sates in which there is a crisis of some sort in which there isn’t a response that isn’t in the nature of solution seeking. And in particular, I would ask everybody who thinks about the burning of the churches. How many news stories did you see about those churches being rebuilt? How many news stories did you see that said that the communities rallied, that across the country communities rallied? And supported the people to rebuild the churches? By focusing on the deviant incident and not on the moments of reconstruction, we don’t manage to take the notion of tolerance and of community building and show that it really is a societal norm that we all share.

SMITH: Thanks very much. I wonder if there’s anybody else involved? Yes sir, please.

JOHNNY PRICE, GREENVILLE BUSINESSMAN: Well I wondered if we could go back and perhaps address a hidden danger, and that is that you have ideas and you have actions. And there are actions that need to be prosecuted. In South Carolina it sounds like we went one step further and we also prosecuted a group of people for, uh, verbalizing their ideas in an influential manner.

SMITH: There was a prosecution of the, of the four Klan members for the burning of the churches and they went to jail.

PRICE: yes.

SMITH: And I gather that you’re in agreement with that.

PRICE: Yes.

SMITH: Ok. Then there was a second case in which the church filed suit against the Klan

PRICE: Yes

SMITH: And I gather you’re in disagreement with that.

PRICE: But the fact of the matter is that there was prosecution for the expression of ideas and do, do we want to prosecute the expression of ideas even if they are abhorrent.

DANIEL NEVILLE, MANNING STORE OWNER: You know we’re held accountable for our ideas, our emotions. Hate crimes are dangerous. If I think that by suing somebody I can make a point to the rest of them, well then by God, I say we sue them. You know whatever means it takes to get our kids back, our streets back and our country back. I mean who do we think we are that we can just go out and destroy somebody’s life or their church and not be held accountable. You know in my opinion they didn’t do enough. That’s just the way I feel.

TOM TURNIPSEED, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: And let me say one other thing about the class. Teaching tolerance. I, I love the class but I don’t like the name. We need not just to tolerate people that are different; we need to love the strength of our diversity in this country. We’re different in so many ways and it’s a strength. It isn’t something to be tolerated.

JOE MOROS: The reality is I wanted to call it halting hatred. What we need to do is we need to get at the roots of the violence. And it isn’t multi culturalism and understanding of the people. It’s looking at what the heck causes these crimes of violence and it’s prejudice, it’s discrimination, it’s name calling. It’s hatred, it’s all these things that end up in violence. And that’s what we need to look at, and stop and a lot of that stops when the name calling stops.

REV. WILEY COOPER, UNITED METHODIST PASTOR: There’s another piece that’s critical and that’s discovering our commonality of interests. I live in an 80% African American community, pastor of a mostly white but not all white congregation and we are very much a part of that community. One of the keys in our community has been to bring people together around the issues that all of us face. The crack house across the street from the school. Everybody wants to get rid of it, and I need you to help me get rid of it. And so we pull people together across all kind of lines to do common tasks and pursue common interests and when I discover that I can’t get done what I know I need done without you, that changes some things. It’s great and it’s terrifically important to focus on our differences and respect for them. But it’s also important to focus on our commonality and how we must have each other.

SMITH: Thank you very much for your comment and thank you all for taking part in our public dialogue. As you’ve seen hate crime is not just a few far away episodes. It’s a social trauma that haunts communities all across America but we’ve also seen two communities working to develop effective responses to violence spawned by bigotry. South Carolina turned to the justice system to punish the Ku Klux Klan for church burning. And then local people helped pay for rebuilding two black churches. In San Clemente California teacher Joe Morris created an innovative high school course about tolerance that has taken the sting out of hate by helping students understand each other. And has made the campus a more peaceful place. What’s clear is that hate crime won’t go away. Unless ordinary people everywhere take steps to face down bigotry and reach across the lines of race, religion and gender to work out their differences peacefully. In short it’s up to all of us to make our own home towns safer places to live. I’m Hedrick Smith. Thank you for being with us.

GROSVENOR v/o: To learn more about this program and grass roots movements to combat crime, visit PBS online at pbs dot org.